How would you handle a friend hired at work behaving oddly?

[Lyontamer]

A few months ago we hired someone that we knew quite well personally in a well paid, senior role and her behaviour has been really, really weird.

As background: she seems to have had a really great career, solid experience working for small companies doing quite niche work, very creative. But the move to our business is very different- different role, different type of business so she got the job mostly because of personal connections.

However! Since coming to work for us things got very weird, very quickly.

For reasons I can't understand, she started off throwing her weight around in a really aggressive way, sort of like demanding authority that doesn't belong to her. Then also treating other senior people with quite a lot of disrespect really needlessly which has resulted in complaints.

Now I've just found out that she told a junior staff member that she previously held an extremely senior role at a very well known brand, and I know this to be completely false. I find making up something like this to be quite worrying.

I've known this person for years and they were always well paid, seemingly successful and a normal CV. They've obviously got plenty of work experience so should know how to behave at work.

Beyond that she always seemed like a really nice, honest, moral type of person. Admittedly she was a bit of a shameless self promoter, but she was otherwise lovely so I overlooked it.

I'd stress she's been given a very well paid job in a nice company where nobody is competitive and she was welcomed very warmly so the behaviour is completely bizarre and we're struggling to work out what's going on.

I've tried speaking to her as have others and reactions have ranged between getting upset and claiming she's being picked on, patronising people, going on the attack or complete denial.

This has created a horrible environment at wirk, and her behaviour is just so odd that I'm hoping for help understanding it. She seems, behind the arrogance to be a bit fragile and so I'm not convinced formal discipline is the right route.

Are you her line manager?

Well it's your business so if she carry's on and it causes problems, you'll have to look for a way to speak to her like you would with all your other employees.

'We hired'

'Our business'

'Coming to work for us'

I think the OP is the business owner.

I'm one of the owners of the company, yes.

Then someone needs to have a conversation with her about the culture of the business, her behaviour, how it’s being perceived and check she’s ok! She might not see or realise how she’s coming across, and then she either stays or leaves.

Are you within a probationary period?

I had a very similar situation with a friend and managed them out, never again!

I think “trying” to speak to her isn’t good enough.

Time for a very open, plain speaking conversation listing specific examples and complaints.

The fact that you like her doesn’t mean she’s a good fit for your company.

Ask for explanations, set expectations and give an explicit time period for her to improve.

If she's in her probationary period, can't you tell her that it isn't working and get rid of her? Easier to do that now. Probably before you actually worked with her you just saw the facade that she wanted to present- now you're seeing what she's really like. If you're finding it odd and uncomfortable imagibe what what more junior colleagues are experiencing and look after them before you lose all of your decent staff.

I am okay with letting her go, her behaviour meets criteria for dismissal. I suppose I'm more trying to understand what this behaviour is about. Why on earth is she lying to our staff to over-inflate her CV?

The lie was significant. It would be a bit like telling someone that you were the COO of Tesla when in reality you'd done an internship there.

It's troubled me. As it feels unstable.

Deal with it now. Don’t let it limp on. Accept the friendship won’t survive unless your skills are such that you can’t her to feel she doesn’t want to stay (I do know someone who could pull this off but she’s unique!). Don’t use an HR advisory services - use an employment lawyer.

I used to give advice to businesses on change management and without fail if they didn’t deal with these situations immediately then it never got properly dealt with it - this impacts the business and good people leave, and the friendship fails in the end anyway. Never employ anyone you can’t be honest with and won’t take steps to expel from the business if needed. People worry how they’ll be perceived if they take robust action but their other employees will judge and vote with their feet if they don’t.

Get rid if you possibly can. If she's lying about something so random, with no positive benefit for her (i.e. it's not as if lying about a previous senior role was what got her the job, which while still immoral would have a rationale), what else is she fibbing about? As the pp said, as the owner you have a bigger responsibility to your other staff than to one person creating problems for herself, friend or not.

If once you're no longer her employer you want to support her as a friend, that's fine. But you'll just go mad wondering about 'why' she's behaving like this. Other than maybe trying an informal chat if you know anyone else she's worked with/for, you might just have to deal with the behaviour as it is first and consider the why's once you've minimised the risk to your company.

Tbh I'm really not worried about the friendship, we weren't close. I have been honest and quite direct, as mentioned she reacts bizarrely.

I'm more worried that there's something odd going on psychologically as the behaviour is just very weird.

I suppose I was looking more for analysis and I've phrased the post badly. It's more about what motivates someone to be really aggressive, try to dominate colleagues, try to needlessly assert authority and back it up with lies about your experience.

Just trying to get a grasp on why someone would do that in a very non competitive environment where they've been treated really generously.

When she dominates colleagues in tries to sort if take over their job she seems genuinely shocked that they're not grateful.... it's like she looks at everything others have done and tries to prove she's better. Even when they work in a different department 😕

It sounds callous but that’s not really your problem and there’s not a lot you can do about it. Obviously you have to ignore the personal relationship and deal with her as you would any other employee.

Is she out of her depth and trying to hide it by being aggressive?
If she’s a massive self promoter, has she just always been able to get jobs on the basis of that, been a nightmare but has managers who have let her get away with it for one reason or another and therefore her CV has continued to grow despite her behaviours?

It could be because she knows you. Trying to prove herself in front of her friends and overdoing it.

Or maybe she’s like this in every role. Did you get references? Has she been through a lot of different roles?

This gave me Amandaland vibes!

Did you properly verify her cv? Her references?

People who lie about things tend to lie a lot....

She probably has bullshitted a lot of her career and certainly lied about her experience and is defensive and aggressive BECAUSE she is useless at her job and doesn’t actually know what she’s doing!! I’ve dealt with people like this several times and eventually it always came out that they had basically managed to swim along with making shit up and because they appeared to know what they were talking about they got away with it but eventually their behaviour and defensiveness and aggressiveness and then the “oh you are bullying me” if ANYTHING was questioned about her - finally found her out

only one person who knows what this behaviour is about really. I think a formal warning is needed at this point, friend or not

what motivates someone to be really aggressive, try to dominate colleagues, try to needlessly assert authority and back it up with lies about your experience

A psychologically insecure response to imposter syndrome.

I'm not sure that you trying to analyse why your friend is behaving the way she is serves a purpose. As the owner of the business, it is up to your and your co-owners to set the standards of acceptable behaviour and proceedures in the workplace. If a worker (regardless of friendship) isn't adhering to these and has been given the requisite friendly chats, then formal HR warnings and still can't bring her behaviour inline with what is tolerated and acceptable in your organisation, it sounds as though you have run out of options and will have to move on to dismissal.

What purpose does it serve to understand what is motivating her? What will you gain by knowing this. Will it make her fit in better or avoid the difficult conversations and processes you are going to have to go through?

Umm, have you actually worked alongside her before? You say her behaviour is out of the ordinary, but do you know that for a fact? She could be very pleasant socially but a complete dick professionally. You also say that she's always been fond of self promotion so maybe the enormous lie isn't unusual for her. It sounds like you didn't really know her that well and this could just be the real her.

Hmm, these are good insights.

I've seen her LinkedIn but it's basically been mostly consultancy and things like that, but i do know she was very highly paid due to her home and so on. Also heard her showing off about her salary in front of her husband etc so took it to be true.

She's done very good work on the thing she was hired to do, but on the things she interfering on she clearly thinks she knows everything and knows nothing.